The Lower Deep (8 page)

Steve nodded.

"A house will be placed at your disposal," the
houngan
went on. "There will be food and water to fulfill your needs. Do not bring a camera, please."

"I won't, I promise you."

"This service,
m'sié,
is held in memory of our African homeland. It is to remind us of our ancestors who were brought here as slaves. I know you have attended other services, but no outsider has ever witnessed this one. The fenced-in compound of small houses in which it takes place is guarded by a caretaker all year long, even though it is used only once a year. There are some rules you will have to abide by, as I mentioned before. I will be glad to go over them with you now, if you wish."

Again Steve's luck was all bad. Already late for his rounds, he had to say, "Later, please. When I get there. But I do appreciate—"

"I quite understand, Dr. Spence. After all, I was a patient of yours, too, remember. So we will be expecting you." And the
houngan
was gone—on foot, with dignity, and without a backward glance as he strode across the hospital compound.

That evening Steve had a date with Nadine Palmer and took her to a pension in the nearby town of Espoir, where they could sit on high stools at a mahogany bar and have a few rum-sodas. Anything higher on the entertainment scale was too far from the hospital.

Nadine and he had become good friends. She was lovely to look at and had been a nurse at the hospital long enough to be at home in St. Joe. They had even attended a few minor voodoo affairs together. She liked him, he felt, as much as he liked her.

Well, maybe not quite. But she might in time.

"Steve, you shouldn't drive yourself to that place," she warned. "Everyone knows the hospital Jeeps. If one of them were parked all night at such a village, there'd be talk."

"Agreed. But I can't walk there. It's up near Perdu."

"Let me go with you and drive the Jeep back." She touched his hand on the bar. "Then I'll come for you the next evening.
That's
what you're planning on, isn't it? A night and a day there?"

Steve nodded. La Souvenance lasted a whole week, he had been told—and had told her. He should have asked the
houngan
about that part of it, and of course would have if there hadn't been so much else on his mind. But anyway, he hadn't a prayer of seeing all of the affair. The hospital would have his hide if he stayed longer than a few hours.

As it happened, he was not able to leave the hos
pital until nearly dark. Some injured had been brought in from a bus accident. By the time Nadine and he departed, night had fallen and the moon was up.

A full moon. Never would he forget that ride north along the coastal highway, with mountains looming like giant blobs of ink on their right and a haze of silver hanging over the sea on their left. Lamplight turned the small windows of peasant
cailles
into peering eyes. Chickens on the road took frantic flight when startled by the vehicle's approach. Roosters crowed in shadowy yards. St. Joe cocks practiced all night, it was said, in order to welcome the dawn with the proper enthusiasm.

On passing a lantern-lit peasant yard packed with people, they heard drums and chanting and recognized the affair as a ceremony to Agoué, the voodoo god of the sea. Steve stopped the Jeep—at that point he was doing the driving, though Nadine had been at the wheel when they left the hospital—and for a while they sat to watch.

After a moment he put an arm around the lovely woman at his side and drew her into his embrace and shaped his lips to hers, not quite knowing whether she would accept the intimacy or pull away from it.

She accepted it. More than that, she returned it. At that moment, he almost ceased to care whether he became the "first outsider" to attend La Souvenance or not. Ahead, near the town of Perdu, they could turn off the road onto a stretch of beach hidden by sea-grape bushes. There would be an empty strip of sand fringing a moonlit sea—a very private place for very private happenings. But just
when the desire to make love to Nadine was on the verge of overwhelming his curiosity about "The Remembrance" of voodoo's roots, Nadine herself broke the spell.

"Hey, you," she said softly. "We'll never get there at this rate. Let's go."

The approach to their destination was as the old
houngan
had described it. After a couple of miles of dark dirt road lined mostly with giant candelabra cactus, the Jeep's headlight beams flowed along a wall of vertical bamboo poles on their left. Then a gate appeared, and on the gate hung a lantern, the only light they had seen in a mile or more.

Steve turned to clasp his companion's hands before getting out of the Jeep, then almost didn't get out. "Look—I'm not sure this is safe, hon. You shouldn't be driving back alone at this hour."

Her lips brushed his face. "Don't worry. I'll be all right, sir."

"But if this bucket of rusty bolts should give you trouble—"

"It won't. And if it did, I'd still be all right. As soon as people found out I'm a nurse from the Brightman, they'd push me home singing hymns."

"You won't be nervous?"

"Uh-uh." She wagged her head while squeezing his hands. "I know these people, Steve. Better than you do, even. Shall I tell you what would really happen if I broke down on the way home?"

"Tell me."

"I'd be invited into some
caille
and given food and coffee, and offered a bed. Probably the only bed in the place. And if the Jeep broke down too
far for me to walk to a house, someone would go for a donkey. Run along, now. Go join your
houn
gans
and
mambos."

He took her in his arms again, this time without any hesitation. Kissed her again, thoroughly. Told her to be careful on the way back, and he would look for her to pick him up the following evening. "You know something?" he said when he was out of the vehicle and leaning in to kiss her good-bye after she slid over behind the wheel. "I think I'm falling in love with you, lady"

"And do you know something?" she replied. "I think I'd like it if you did."

She turned the Jeep around, and he stood in the middle of the dirt road, watched its solitary taillight dwindle to a drop of blood before disappearing. Then he walked to the gate.

It had been opened by a man who was apparently the gatekeeper. Beside that one, a middle-aged fellow in a black shirt and black trousers stood waiting with outstretched hand. "You are Dr. Spence,
m'sié?"
he asked in Creole.

"Yes, compère."

"Come with me, please. I am to take you to a
caille
that has been made ready for you." At least, that was what Steve understood him to say. The Creole varied in different parts of the island, and the man was obviously from some part Steve had not been in. The fact that his mouth was all but empty of teeth made a translation even more difficult.

As they walked across the compound together, the man continued talking, and Steve picked up snatches. "Will last a week" was one such frag
ment. "Not leave" was another. Later, Dr. Steve Spence was to remember that walk and blame himself bitterly for not taking the time to question the fellow. Haste makes waste, he would remind himself. In this case, the proverb should have been "Haste makes horror."

He would probably not see anything very out of the ordinary in the short time he was to be here, Steve reluctantly had to admit when he walked about the compound later. True, there were more than a hundred persons present, including perhaps thirty women, but the ceremonies being held throughout the compound at present were apparently only preliminaries.

The later ones would be something else, without a doubt. Among the animals tethered for sacrifice were a huge black bull and the largest white ram he had ever laid eyes on.

At one of the night's events, however, he did see for the first time one of the fabled
assotor
drums about which he had heard so much. Nearly seven feet tall and played by a man on a platform, this was the largest, tallest, and deepest-voiced of all the voodoo drums. For more than an hour, entranced, he stood in the doorway of that particular peristyle and watched while the drummer filled the night with a rhythmic thunder.

Out of the dark came his
houngan
friend from the hospital—obviously a man of high standing, for at his appearance the thunder ceased for a moment while the player saluted him. That particular thunder, the
houngan
explained to Steve, was meant to awaken the gods or
loa
from their slum
ber, wherever they might be, and summon them to La Souvenance. And they would come.

The faithful awaiting their coming were from all parts of St. Joseph, it seemed. In a country where travel was such a hardship, that seemed to say a lot for the power of faith. The
houngan
from the hospital, strolling about the compound with him now, introduced him to some of them. All responded politely to his greetings, though some were obviously startled to find themselves gazing at a white face.

From time to time during that eventful night Steve did return to his hut for a few minutes of rest and refreshment, though he had no intention of retiring while anything of interest was taking place. One look at the drinking water provided for him dissuaded him from tasting any. Green and slimy, it came from an ancient village well and probably would be fatal to anyone who had not built up an immunity to typhoid over the years. Instead, he sipped from a bottle of St. Joseph rum he had brought along, and sucked hard candy he had dropped into his pocket before leaving the hospital.

Then at daybreak, during a lull in the activities, he went to his hut and stretched out for a while on a sleeping mat there. And was to regret that later—at least, was to regret having taken off his shoes—because in addition to all the other horrors brought on by his attendance at La Souvenance, he had to remove
chigres
from under four of his toenails. Those nasty little beasties dwelt in the soil of such places, it seemed, and invariably felt an urge to burrow under one's toenails to lay
their eggs. And the victim had damned well better get them out in a hurry or he could lose a toe or two to infection.

That day, in response to the throbbing of the
assotor,
many of the summoned
loa
arrived and possessed the minds of chosen celebrants—or so it seemed. At least, the chosen ones underwent striking alterations in personality and appearance, speaking and behaving as the
loa
were known to. Services were held in their honor in the peristyles scattered throughout the village. Steve went from one to another, sweltering under roofs of banana thatch to watch the proceedings.

There was chanting. There was more drumming. There was dancing of the incredibly skilled kind that, years ago, had led the famed Katherine Dunham to recruit dancers of that other voodoo country, Haiti, for her international troupe.

Not once did he meet with anything but politeness. Never an ugly word or an ugly question concerning the reason for his presence. The old
houngan
who had invited him had prepared them, it seemed. Almost everyone knew he was a doctor from that hospital in Fond des Pintards that did so much for the barefoot ones of this poor country. As for the old
houngan
himself, he became possessed at a service early in the day and thereafter wandered about the compound talking to people in a strange tongue that no one understood. By way of explanation he would add in Creole,
"Mwen Moise!
(I am Moses!) I bring you greetings from the old days."

Could the foreign tongue be Hebrew? Steve
knew no words in that language with which to test the man.

When the time drew near for Nadine Palmer to return for him, Steve would have said good-bye to many of those he had met, but it was out of the question. The evening ceremonies had begun. With regret that he would not be able to see more of the rituals, he placed his still nearly full bottle of rum where someone in need would be sure to find it, and reluctantly made his way across the compound to the gate.

The same gatekeeper who had let him in stepped forward with a scowl to confront him.

"Yes, m'sié?"

"I have to leave now,
compère."

The fellow did not step aside. Did not, in fact, even budge, except to take in a whistling breath and place his big, long-fingered hands on his hips.

"You cannot leave,
m'sié.
It is forbidden."

Though tired from the long ordeal, Steve felt his pulse race. What was this? To be sure, the old
houngan
had made some remark about there being rules that must be obeyed, and the fellow with the unfamiliar Creole might have mentioned something similar, but for this to be happening now . . .